Barrister or Bankrupt

Staff Mobility, Dual Careers and Spouse Employment - An Overview

[Why is the UN concerned with what its employees' spouses are up to?]

The recruitment process was gruelling. It wasn't the number of candidates applying: the job requires a very specific set of skills, and you expected only a few people in the world to apply. You placed the vacancy advertisement in the Economist, Wall Street Journal and other prestigious publications. Those selected for interview flew in from all corners of the earth, attracted by your organisation's reputation and the excellent salary on offer. And after all that, your perfect candidate turns you down because her husband can't get a work permit.

This is a scenario which sounds increasingly familiar to HR recruiters and headhunters worldwide. Not yet having an exotic foreign partner, I only realised the extent of the issue when I started working on it at the UN Dual Career and Staff Mobility Programme. Curiosity led me to see how other organisations in other sectors deal with the interlinked issues of staff mobility, dual careers and spouse employment.

When people in recruitment talk of "staff mobility", they are referring to the ability to move current or potential employees from their present place of work and residence to another. "Dual career" issues are those surrounding couples where both partners want to work, and "spouse employment" describes the challenge of the employee's spouse finding a job in the new location.

This stuff is big business. Specialist companies such as Cartus and GMAC Global Relocation Services (current slogan: "The World is Our Hometown") are doing rather nicely from consulting on and even handling their clients' global reassignments, and Ernst & Young sponsors the Institute for Global Mobility, where "Global Mobility Professionals" come together and discuss strategic trends and solutions.

Immigration lawyers are "Global Mobility Professionals" too. They are important because all this moving around of workers and their families takes place in a legally restrictive environment, the restrictions coming in the form of work permits, quotas, visa requirements and suchlike. Even members of supranational efforts such as the European Union largely apply their own rules on the sensitive issues of immigration, employment and nationality.

As with asylum these issues touch people deeply, and the ways in which countries legislate on the subject is very interest and sometimes quite revealing of social and political outlooks and trends. Here are some of my favourites:

A male ancestor in your family born on the Italian peninsula in the 19th century gives you a great chance of obtaining Italian citizenship (and hence the right to live and work in 27 EU countries). It doesn't even matter if he was born before Italy came into being as a country: if he was alive at the country's birth in 1861 he became a subject of the Kingdom of Italy, with the concomitant right to pass down that privilege.

Sources: Italian citizenship law of 5th February 1992 (in Italian)

Only a few quick formalities stand between a foreign bride of a Basotho man and a Lesotho passport. Women cannot confer Basotho citizenship on their foreign husbands through marriage.

Source: Constitution of Lesotho

Free movement of workers in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is more heavily based on one's profession than in the European Union, on which CARICOM is largely modelled. Musicians and Cricketers are some of the professions most free to move and work around the Caribbean.

Source: Caribbean Community Free Movement of Skilled Persons Act 1997 (Jamaica)

United Nations Dual Career and Staff Mobility Programme

[Me at United Nations World Food Programme HQ, Rome, Italy]

Since April I've been at United Nations World Food Programme HQ in Rome, working on a very interesting project called UN Dual Career and Staff Mobility.

The UN moves a lot of its staff around. A lot. In an earlier age a regular UN couple would likely consist of one spouse working for the UN and the other staying home, whatever duty station happened to be "home" at the time. Nowadays this is rarely the case and a UN staff member is often accompanied around the world by his or her doctor/teacher/actor/otherwise-professional spouse (or increasingly, unmarried partner).

In almost every country where the UN sends staff any diplomatic immunity enjoyed by the UN couple does not extend to the right to work for the non-UN partner; spouses are still seen by host-country governments as merely a partner of the UN operative - often the rather humiliating designation partner of... is even written as spouse's official occupation into their official identity documents. It's a long fall from international lawyer to partner, as one of our clients recently wrote in an article about the difficulties she faced in a foreign country.

UN Dual Career and Staff Mobility was established to mitigate the problems faced by working expatriate UN spouses and unmarried partners. We advocate for this worthy cause from a Global Expatriate Spouse Association (UN/GESA) here in Italy, researching possible ways into national labour markets and supporting our clients through the establishment of Local Expatriate Spouse Associations (UN/LESAs). Being attached to the World Food Programme (WFP) is very useful, as the WFP is in most of the UN's most difficult duty stations. Often WFP spouses and partners are in the vanguard of establishing LESAs around the world and it is useful to benefit from their experience and contacts.

More on spouse employment, staff mobility, the United Nations and Rome very soon...

Shadows of the Past

[What is this doing greeting visitors to one of Poland's foremost institutes for European Studies?]

I saw this interesting installation when the Talking Bear took me to his faculty, the Institute of European Studies of Jagiellonian University. I didn't recall a swastika-shaped fountain being in the hallway when I was an undergraduate there.

It turns out that the fountain comes with the building - the institute had since moved to a Nazi-built WWII-era castle on the outskirts of Kraków.

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Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of my employer. Because I don't currently have one.

Shami Chakrabarti: "Asylum" - the new dirty word?

(Shami Chakrabarti with Michael Ellman, Chair of the Solicitor's International Human Rights Group)

I recently attended a talk given by Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty on the subject of asylum. Liberty is a prominent civil liberties and human rights organisation in the UK. When defining the landscape of the subject SC proposed that asylum be thought of as a "connector" between human rights at home and the ethics of foreign policy.

The talk was at least partly a discussion on semantics of terms in the field of asylum and immigration. I am now fascinated by how use of the phrase asylum seeker is constricting the normal use of the word refugee, so much so that nowadays it has more of a legal meaning - you are only a refugee when a government has accepted you as one. SC gave the example of boat people in the 1980s being commonly described as refugees in the British media before they had reached land (and therefore any official government designation). Might Vietnamese boat people heading here or to another friendly country nowadays be called asylum seekers by the same media sources?

Another point which I found interesting was that of the definition of nearest safe country in the context of changing concepts of borders. Whereas large groups of displaced poor people may still see escape across the nearest border as the best way of putting themselves in the nearest safe country, cannot any country with a direct flight connection to the country of escape also be regarded as "nearest" in many circumstances? The opportunity of escape might define what country was "nearest" to the escapee just as much as geographical distance.

The talk was organised by the Solicitors International Human Rights Group (SIHRG). The group's next event (on 22nd November 2006) sees Richard Gifford of Sheridans speaking on the Chagos Islanders.

"Notable Advocates" post on Shami Chakrabarti

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Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of my employer.

Polish-Haitian Connection Part 2: Voodoo, Erzulie Dantor and the Black Madonna

(On the left is a photo of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa. The chromolithograph on the right is commonly used in Haiti to depict the loa Erzulie Dantor)

Haitian Voodoo is mostly derived from a religious system of deity and ancestor veneration widely practiced in western Africa at the time of the Atlantic slave trade. Haitian Voodoo has extra ("New World") spirits which do not exist in African voodoo. People who ended up as slaves on the caribbean islands controlled by the Kingdom of France were forbidden (at first on an ad-hoc basis, later by the Code Noir) from practicing any religion other than Catholicism.

In light of all this a process of syncretisation took place on Haiti (or Saint-Domingue as the territory was then called) where some voodoo loa (spirits) became identified with Catholic saints and some Catholic saints became loa in their own right. It's a fascinating subject, an introduction to which should be related by those more talented than I. BoB particularly reccommends Webster University professor Bob Corbett's site in this regard.

A particular syncretisation spurred me into writing about Voodoo - that between the Black Madonna of Czestochowa (Polish: Czarna Madonna Częstochowska) and the New World loa Erzulie Dantor. This is the loa of single mothers, homosexuals, justice and independence. Dantor was present at a famous voodoo ritual in 1791, where she took over the body of one of the worshippers and urged Haitians to "kill the stranger" - this precipitated the revolution which culminated in independence for the island in 1804 and the massacre of every Frenchman on the island.

For her part the Black Madonna has a special place in Polish national myth. The painting is housed in Poland's holiest monastery at Jasna Góra. Legend has it that the icon was painted by St. Luke on a tabletop belonging to Mary and Joseph and eventually brought to Poland. Her distinctive facial scars are said to have miraculously reappeared after they had been painted over following a pagan attack, an indication that the Black Madonna wanted to share in the nation's fate.

Revolutionary Haitians were not to know all of these details. The backstory to the painting in Voodoo lore is of a mother fiercely protective of the daughter she carries (actually Jesus in the Catholic interpretation). She loves knives and received the facial scars fighting with her sister Erzulie Freda. The scars are a sign of Dantor's strength - she is wounded but keeps going.

It is hard to say why this particular religious painting became a popular focus for syncretisation with a "New World" spirit of Haitian Voodoo. Her black skin may have made the painting more acceptable to a black population than other white-skinned versions, much as images of saints with explicitly Black African features are popular in Africa. It is also possible that there were many more copies of this particular painting on the island than others, following the landing of 5000 Polish legionaries on the island in 1802. Many Poles to this day keep depictions of the Black Madonna in their homes, cars and wallets.

Please follow the below links to see more depictions of Erzulie Dantor:

Painting by Hërsza Barjon

Papier Maché sculpture by unknown artist

Painting by Elaine Soto

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Polish-Haitian Connection Part 1: For Your Freedom and Ours

I happened across the subject of Poles in Haiti in Riccardo Orizio's "Lost White Tribes: Journeys Among the Forgotten". The Polish Legions serving under Napoleon were sent to put down the Haitian Revolution there in 1802. For those that subscribe to the ideal of a multicultural and tolerant Polish nation, what happens next goes like this: The Polish soldiers sympathised with the rebelling slaves since they, like the Poles, were fighting for their own independent state (Poland had by this time been carved up by its' neighbours and had ceased to exist). Resentful of Napoleon's decision to send them West to the Caribbean instead of East towards Poland, the legionaries defected to the side of the former slaves and fought alongside them to eventually establish the world's first Black republic. Following independence they took wives and passed on their surnames (e.g. Potenski) and fairer complexions, both of which can be witnessed to this day in rural Haiti.

By most accounts only up to 150 out of the 5000 legionaries sent to the western hemisphere switched sides. A proportion of those would no doubt have done so under duress. Most of the rest died from yellow fever or combat with the Black forces. Still, the legend endures among Haitians and some Poles (including my family) that many Poles fought for Jean-Jacques Dessalines in the liberation of Haiti. The Haitian Constitution of 1805 bars all "whitemen" from ownership of property in Haiti. An exception is given to the "naturalized Germans and Polanders", who are from thenceforth to be classified as Black:

12. No whiteman of whatever nation he may be, shall put his foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor, neither shall he in future acquire any property therein.

13. The preceding article cannot in the smallest degree affect white women who have been naturalized Haytians by Government, nor does it extend to children already born, or that may be born of the said women. The Germans and Polanders naturalized by government are also comprized [sic] in the dispositions of the present article.

14. All acception [sic] of colour among the children of one and the same family, of whom the chief magistrate is the father, being necessarily to cease, the Haytians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks.

[Haitian Constitution of 1805 as published in English in the New York Times that same year, full text on Professor Corbett's page here]

Orizio's book, too, contains some great evidence (including photographic) that these guys settled down and cast their seed to the present day. The Pope even met some of the "Haitian Poles" when he visited the island in 1983.

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Frank's List

If you are interested in issues surrounding migration in a British context you may find Frank's List (formerly known as asylumpolicy.info) a useful resource.

It's a newsletter put out by a non-profit organisation called exile, aggregating news on "asylum, immigration and rights".

Please follow the links to find a sample short digest (1 to 4 times weekly) and a weekly digest.

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Migrant Advertising Part 2

(Spotted on the 206 bus, south Brent, 31st April 2006)

Another poster in London targeted at migrants. However unlike the first one I saw this one is not targeting legal working migrants but asylum seekers and irregular migrants (for example those trafficked into the UK).

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is an intergovernmental organisation working on migration issues around the world. In the UK, their main mission is assisting in the voluntary return of migrants from the UK. To this end the London office of IOM have recently been working with the Home Office to provide financial and educational assistance to some returnees who voluntarily agree to return home. At time of writing levels of assistance are as high as £3000 in training, business seed money and cash. As well as asylum seekers IOM London estimates there to be 430,000 irregular migrants in the UK.

This poster and another I have recently seen which were targeted exclusively at migrants appeared in and around Brent, one of the capital's most multicultural boroughs. Less than 50% of its population is white (National Statistics) and over 120 languages are spoken within its borders (Brent Council).

If you would like to know more, please follow the link to IOM London.

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Migrant Advertising Part 1

(The slogan reads "I'm sending so much more than money". Apart from the firm's name, there isn't a word of English on the entire poster.)

A few weeks before I set up BoB I came across this advertisement on a bus stop in south Brent. It was written entirely in Polish and so came as quite a shock to me, my first language not having been widely used enough before in London for multinational advertisers to consider using it. At last count (December 2005) the Home Office's Worker Registration Scheme puts the number of Poles who have entered the UK labour market since EU enlargement at 204,895, though I am sure it is higher since membership of the scheme is not widely policed and does not seem to be a requirement for getting a National Insurance number (UPDATE May 11th 2006: The Economist thinks it is "over half a million"). The poster is proof of that number of working people with an interest in remittance services being a large enough market to focus advertising expenditure on to the exclusion of other language groups, even the dominant one.

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Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of my employer.